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Labor will set up 80 new rape courts in England and Wales to speed up cases as part of wide-ranging plans to tackle violence against women and girls to be announced in the party’s general election manifesto this week.
The specialist courts will be set up in unused rooms and spare capacity in every existing Crown Court in a bid to end the growing backlog which sees 60% of rape victims drop out before their cases even start.
Between the end of 2019 and the end of 2023, Labor says there was a 346% increase in the number of adult rape cases in the court backlog, leading to claims that rape is effectively “decriminalized”.
Only 2.6% of rape cases result in charges. Labor leader Keir Starmer said he would halve violence against women and girls and introduce tougher sentences for rapists as part of his “missions” for the government.
The party will also make a manifesto pledge to introduce specialist rape units in every police force, where officers trained to deal with domestic violence will work with victims. Rape victims and others suffering domestic violence will also be designated as “vulnerable”, meaning their cases will be dealt with more quickly.
Starmer will unveil Labour’s manifesto on Thursday as the election campaign enters a new phase based more on real political commitments. Party sources said it would be “ambitious, with a clear plan to change the country for the better”.
Rishi Sunak – under intense pressure to revive Tory morale and turn the polls around after another disastrous few days – will also unveil the Conservative manifesto this week. He will prioritize tax cuts, including a promise to permanently scrap stamp duty for first-time buyers on the first £425,000 of property value.
The latest Opinium poll for Observer shows a Labor lead of 18 points, down two from a week ago. Labor is on 42% (-3), the Tories on 24% (-1), the Reforms on 12% (+1) following Nigel Farage’s decision to stand down and lead the party, the Lib Dems on 10% (+2) and the Greens 7% (+1). Most of the groundwork was done before news broke late on Thursday that Sunak had left D-Day celebrations in France early – a mistake he apologized for amid anger from his MPs and party activists.
Opinium found that Labor now has the lead in all major policy areas, including those where it has traditionally not been strong, such as crime and the economy. When voters were asked who would run the economy better, Labor led by 10 points and on crime by 12 points.
On Saturday, after two of his cabinet ministers, Penny Mordaunt and Mark Harperhad criticized the Prime Minister for walking out of the D-Day events before they were over, an apparently distraught Sunak canceled plans to take questions from the media during a visit to Bishop Auckland, County Durham.
Speaking about her party’s plans to halve violence against women and children and tackle the court backlog, shadow justice minister Shabana Mahmoud said: “It is a blemish on this government’s record that rape victims are waiting so long, to see justice. Thanks to 14 years of Tory chaos, we see unacceptable delays in the courts and 60% of rape victims drop out. For too many, justice delayed has become justice denied.
“The Labor Government will work tirelessly to change this. We will halve violence against women and girls within a decade. Under our plans, we will provide free legal counsel for rape victims to ensure that victims’ rights are respected. And we will introduce specialist rape courts and fast-track rape cases to ensure that justice is done quickly and safely.
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This is what the Audit Chamber said last month he no longer believed that the Ministry of Justice’s ambition to reduce the total backlog to 53,000 by March 2025 is achievable. Of the 67,573 cases awaiting trial, nearly a fifth (18%) are sex crimes.
The NAO says this is partly due to the fact that there has been a large increase in the number of rape cases – the number of those going to court increased from 624 (1.6% of all cases) in 2019 to 2,786 (4, 1% of all cases) in 2023. Rape cases are more complex, with a lower proportion of defendants pleading guilty, so they take longer on average to go to trial.
Charities such as Rape Crisis say there are also shortages of solicitors, barristers and judges, a lack of contingency plans after Covid-19 hit and cuts to court funding.
Mahmoud also promised that Labor would tackle prison overcrowding. “The crisis in our prisons is a powder keg waiting to explode. We will build the places for prisons [the Tories] promised but never delivered and we will reduce repeat infringement. I am determined to solve the prison crisis for the long term, not just stave off the disaster for another day, week or month.
Labor sources said his plans were fully assessed and details of how they would be paid for would accompany the manifesto.
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